America in 2023 is struggling with the reality of privilege in the face of its aspirations for diversity, equity, and inclusion. For many, these questions of social and economic justice have condensed into one word, “woke”. Being woke is a badge of honor to some, an insult to others. What follows, a provisional examination of privilege and liberation from a Zen view, will be challenging for both camps.
Budda was born into a life of privilege. He abandoned this privilege and woke up to liberation. Yet even this “home leaving” was a privilege. Being Buddhist has always been a privilege, and largely the purview of the privileged. Being privileged is to receive special treatment, even when not desired or sought. Privilege (and its obverse) is usually considered to be dependent on factors such as skin color, gender identity, religious affiliation, the transgenerational flow of wealth. Buddhism recognizes the existence these external and internal factors as the source of much privilege, but contends liberation is not dependent on their presence or absence. How so?
In Buddhism, human birth, with all its woes and joys, is considered the highest privilege. In the six traditional realms of (re)incarnation [gods, asuras, humans, hungry ghosts, animals, hell-beings] it is human birth which most fully supports liberation. Not liberation from causes and conditions, but from the suffering of such karmas.
Liberation from suffering is a privilege, but liberation from suffering does not depend on privilege…at least not in the usual sense.
Why is being born human such a privilege? Because humans can wake up. Wake up to the mind of comparison as the mind of non-discrimination. Wake up to identity (even those externally imposed) as garments put on and taken off as causes and conditions necessitate. Wake up to the fact that the pain of the human condition, be it social injustice, discrimination, oppression; or old age, sickness and death, is just that…pain. But it is not suffering. Suffering is what we do with the pain…but so is liberation.
True privilege is liberation from suffering caused by the conditions of our lives. Being liberated by the very conditions of our lives. To experience our moment-to-moment fleeting incarnations, from all-powerful gods to tormented hell-beings, fully and completely as waves rising and falling. Awakening to self and other as delusions constructed by self and other, delusions which can (and ultimately must) be deconstructed by self and other. Awakening to delusions as the cause of pain, as the cause of actual harm, but not as the cause of suffering. Being woke to “I” as the cause suffering.
How does this work for the hungry, oppressed, marginalized persons of the world? As best it can. It doesn’t mean rolling over and blithely accepting injustice and discrimination. It may mean righting these wrongs with all the means at one’s disposal. But it also means knowing that the alleviation of pain, no matter how horrible, will not end suffering.
Pain is inevitable, suffering optional. Actualizing this is the privilege of liberation.